Soon we’ll be enjoying a week away from everything and go on vacation, and I realized that my brain is already there. Since vacationing is on my mind this week, I thought I would discuss vacations – SSC style. Taking vacations used to be no big deal, we would pick a place to visit, get everything lined up and then go. Yeah, easy!! Add 2 kids in the mix and everything gets a lot harder to manage, and WAY more expensive. Plus, get kids out of their routine and schedule, and OMG things can get crazy pretty quickly. So how do we deal with this and what do we do to keep the costs down so we can vacation more, let me tell you.
This past President’s Day I had the day off. Yep, I’m at one of the odd oil companies that still honors this day, which meant Mrs. SSC was at work, and the kids were at daycare, so I had a real free day to myself. I decided I would take the opportunity to go fishing, since I hadn’t been on the water yet this year. The weekend before, I checked my fishing tackle, read up on some new rigging techniques and made a list of things I needed from our local outdoor store. I got some different hooks, weights, and other items so I could try a new fishing technique. It’s actually old as dirt, but since I’m new to freshwater – non-fly fishing style fishing, it’s been “learn as you go”, and I have no one to teach me anything. That equals a lot of fishing, and just a little catching.
This was some catching! Yeah!
When I got to the lake, I talked with a guy, Cowboy, and he was telling me about a website that had all of these crazy expensive reels on sale for less than $50. Line, rods, reels, lures, anything you would ever need. He mentioned that he found it over the holidays when his house had been robbed and they got $1000 worth of tackle from his place. My first thought was, Holy crap, including my kayak, I don’t have $1000 worth of tackle! When he described his reels that he had stolen he talked about how he’d paid $400 for one, $200 for another, $300 for one that was on sale… Then I realized, I must be pretty cheap when it comes to buying gear. My whole rod/reel setup was less than $60, although I did get it on a great 40% off sale. It’s worked great and I’ve caught some really big fish on it. My other rod and reel, was one my mom used back in the day, and with a little reel lube and occasional line replacement, it is still catching fish at over 30 years old… My kayak, I got on sale for $150 off, along with all the accoutrements. Then I realized what the difference was in my shopping habits and Cowboy’s shopping habits.
I shop for value on my money spent balanced with the return I’ll get out of it. Hmm, that sounds like a lot of jibber jabber, so let me explain what I mean. I’m just an average Joe fisherman that probably couldn’t tell the difference in quality between a $400 reel and my current reel. Okay, I could, but I wouldn’t see it being worth the extra $340. I understand that the $400 reel will no doubt be “better” than my reel that I use. If Cowboy values that extra quality, then that’s awesome it’s his hobby, he should be able to enjoy it with whatever tackle he finds makes it more enjoyable for him. I would find a lot more enjoyable things to do than spend an extra $340 on a reel, so for me, it doesn’t pay out a positive return. I also understand that in general more expensive means better quality, but it doesn’t mean you have to overbuy. For less than $60 I’ve had a rod and reel that has worked great for over 3 years now. I didn’t overbuy but I didn’t buy cheap either.
I’ve found buying “cheap” leads to more spending than buying quality because cheaper things break quicker and need to be replaced more often. However, there are plenty of middle of the road companies that make great products for fair prices. I tend to stay in this path, unless I find a great sale. Even then, just because something is on sale, doesn’t mean you need it.
I’ve come to find that’s the key with spending and not just related to hobbies. It’s not about “how much did it cost”, even though it seems like it for some people. I’m not one of those people. I’d rather get a fair price for good quality than spend more to have a name brand. When we were kids, my Grandad would give us $100 for Christmas. The stipulation was that you had to use it on shoes first, then you can do whatever you want with the money. My brother would invariably get the new Nike Jordan’s and still need an extra $10-$20 bucks from mom or dad. I’d hit Shoe Carnival and get 2 pairs of shoes, and have $60 left over to spend on whatever I wanted. I didn’t overbuy, my shoes lasted the year, and I got to get more toys or what not with the leftover.
Have you ever found yourself overbuying on things? Is overbuying worth it for you? It was for my brother, and he got his return on enjoyment from the money spent by having Air Jordans, even though they wouldn’t always make it a full year…
Man, was this a rough month for the budget in the SSC household. As I’d teased last month, we were expecting a few overages due to the A/C repairs, new tires, new greyhound adoption and the like, but I wasn’t expecting the hits to keep rolling. Fortunately, there haven’t been any breakdowns, repairs, or otherwise costly expenses that have cropped up yet this month, and we’re almost a third of the way through it. A quick glance at the bar chart shows June (appropriately orange) topping the charts in almost every category except the stable ones like mortgage, car note, and home utilities. How did this all happen and where did the money go you wonder? Since we don’t have the usual “numbers” chart for this month (it will return in the July update and you can peruse it then) I’ll just tell you.
Ouch, June hurt!
Phone, tv, internet got hit with a $65/month increase due to 2 years’ worth of discounts finally running out. I called ATT, asking about any other ways to reduce our bill, and besides getting a 3 month $40 discount applied to our account, it was just lip service. I shopped around and 2 days later have our service switched and added bonus, NFL Sunday package is included for free this year! I count that as a win, since I’ll probably have to pony up for that one from my discretionary funds if we continue it in the future. Increased daycare costs – no clue. I’m guessing it’s a combo of short month in May, little longer month in June, and the difference was made up in June. Groceries were okay, trending a little higher than usual, but we’ve been on a “grocery spend watch” just to see if we can keep it steady.
Home repairs… Oh, home repairs…. Besides the A/C drip line getting clogged up (~$450), we also got 2 solar screens made for the bathroom windows (~$140) and it is now cool as can be in there, and not sauna like every day. We also had our wall mount A/C controller go out, so there was some added cost there. When we looked at replacing it with the same unit, we realized we could try the Nest for a little less (~$250). So far it’s been working great! The garage door springs also broke in this month, and that was another $440 to get them replaced. The car needed new tires, so I went a middle of the road option for that, but it was still ~$650 we didn’t want to spend.
The kids had their birthdays this past week, and we had a party. No, no, not some thousand dollar extravaganza with entertainers, balloon animals, and bounce houses. Oh wait, there was a bounce house, but upside, it was paid for over a year ago, and overall, not that pricey. Essentially we just had friends over and did snacks, drinks, and appetizer sort of food, beyond the cake and ice cream.
Both cakes came out nice!
I designed and decorated James’ cake, and Mrs. SSC did Marie’s.
James wanted a construction cake, so I built this one.
With the food and extra drinks, juice boxes and gifts (For our kids not those give away bags for the party, I just don’t get those) it was still ~$200 or so for entertaining.
The bigger kicker of the month was our shower in the master bathroom. The metal for the hinge on the door fatigued and split. When this happened the pin that rests on this tubular metal hinge now sat about ½” lower and started hanging up on the lower part of the door. Imagine any door you use dropping a half inch and you get the idea. After hours of scouring the internet and talking to 4 different shower companies, we found out that they don’t make replacement parts for the style of enclosure we had. Seriously, what a racket! None, no parts. They have to be connected to the mob somehow, but no, they just expect you to replace the WHOLE thing if something like a tubular hinge fatigues and splits. So, after getting 3 quotes all within $50 of each other, we got our shower replaced to the tune of $1350….. Ridiculous! Now you understand where the comment about fixing all the “custom everything” on the Living Big Sky show came from, as it was playing the night after we’d ordered our standard shower door replacement. Ugh…
Finally, we got the newest member of the family our new greyhound, Coffee!! Kidding, we went with Lola instead of her racing name “Rusteze”. She’s been great, but the adoption fee of $250 and the $200 vet checkup/heartworm and tick/flea medicine and some other costs added up to just over $500.
Happy and relaxing
Sound asleep!
So to recap, we’re about $3600 over budget this month. Fingers crossed that we don’t have the same string of spending in the next few months, but I see it trending back downward again.
How was your month?
Did you get any crazy unexpected bills,repairs, or new pets that threw your budget for a loop?
So far, June has been the month of things breaking around the house. I alluded to one repair that cropped up in our May 2015 update, and I was expecting to have to get new tires soon as well, but man, it seems like every time I turn around, something else has broken. What all has gone on? Well, let me tell you.
It started a few weeks ago when we noticed one of our pipes coming out of the house was dripping water. Mrs. SSC googled it, and found out that, “Yipe! That is our AC overflow drain and it shouldn’t ever be dripping water!” We immediately googled DIY AC drain cleaning. Looked pretty simple, just find the original drain, hook up a vacuum and it “should” suck out all the built up algae and what not. Bada-Bing, Bada-boom! Clean drain! I get in the attic, as this is where our main units are located, and trace the pipe across the attic to where it drops into the wall and into the guest bathroom where it is tied into the P trap under the sink. I start monkeying with the joints, and hooray, they have glued every single joint… At this point, I don’t want to start cutting PVC, and get myself into a plumbing rabbit hole nightmare, so we call around and find out it’s only about $69 for drain cleaning. I find this price point definitely worth it, so I set up an appointment.
My crude AC drain diagram
The guy gets there and cuts apart the joints, and snakes the line, and nothing. He gets in the attic, cuts apart the line somewhere else, snakes it, vacuums, and nothing. He keeps at it for 4 hrs. and kept re-iterating that there was no guarantee on this drain cleanout. After about 5 hrs., he got a bunch of gunk out of the line and it was all sealed up. However, because this wasn’t a typical drain cleaning, it was in the $450 range, and not $70, but I had signed off on this before he started, and inwardly I was a little glad it took 5 hrs., because I felt a little more justified. I also watched everything and asked lots of questions, and realized that with 5+ hrs. of my own time, I could’ve saved $450. Lesson learned for next time.
Three days later, we notice the drip is back. Yep, remember the non-guarantee about cleaning? This time I call no one, and head to Lowe’s for some PVC connectors, piping, and then start cutting up the pipe. I essentially cut the pipe near the unit, and disconnected it at the last place the plumber cut it. This was about a 10’ section of pipe, and after some finagling, I got it outside. There I turned the jet nozzle of our hose into it and even that wasn’t getting the blockage out. I poked it with a sink snake I had sprayed some more, and about a cupful of algae, scale, and God knows what finally came out. Then I go upstairs and 15 minutes later, clean drain. Yeah me! I was sorry that I didn’t try that sooner, but I’ve always had poor luck when I work on plumbing, so I didn’t feel confident enough to try it on my own the first time. Not anymore!
The second major cost was a broken garage door spring. I went to open the garage door, and heard a loud snap and banging sound. I went to investigate and I saw that the one of the mounts had ripped out of the wall. This was the mount that holds up our garage door overhead bar that the belt travels on, and keeps it attached to the wall.
Seriously?! This just happened?
The people who had installed it had just barely hit the stud with their bolts, and it had ripped out of the top of the stud, and out of the drywall, and was laying on the top of the garage door. I sighed, cursed a little, but 15 minutes later I had it repaired and sunk into a solid stud. Yeah me!
Yep, this is where it ripped out of the top of the stud.
When I hit the door button, it would only travel about 4 inches and stop. I investigated closer and saw the spring was snapped in half. Aye yi yi! I disengaged the motor and tried to manually lift the door so I could at least get the car out, and no. I could get it up about 2 feet before the other spring forced it back down. A couple of calls around and I got some rough quotes and found a place that could get out there that afternoon. This was about 2 pm, because I was home taking care of a sick little one. That repair for both springs (why wait for this to happen again) was right at $440 too.
I think home repair folks just look at some papers, shuffle them, and say, “Meh, that’ll be about $450.” And then shrug their shoulders at you with their hand out waiting for payment. It’s only June 10th, so I can’t wait to see what the rest of the month brings.
How about you? Have you run into any unexpected home repairs recently?
Did you have the time to DIY them, or did you call someone?
Anyone else feel like it’s at least $100 for someone to show up to your house to say “This will cost more than $100.”
While Mrs. SSC was paying the bills, she noticed that Discover had a cash-back reward offer for her personal Discover credit card that she uses for her ‘allowance’. Anyway, Mrs. SSC noticed that there was an offer of “spend $2k/month for the next 3 months and get $300 FREE!” Mrs. SSC thought this was awesome, since we have a second Discover card account that we use as our primary household credit card for bill paying/grocery/gas/etc… type of card that gets paid off every month. So, she went to see if she could sign up for this awesome deal with our household Discover card, and any guesses on whether it was offered on that account or not? Hmmm? Anyone?
No, is the correct answer.
So, for the card we typically have a fairly consistent amount spent on each month, there is bubkus in regards to additional offers. On the more meager monthly spend card (Mrs. SSC allowance spending) there was this nice reward offer. So then, would it be worth it to use that card for groceries and gas and get an extra $300 in a few months? Sure. But, really Discover just wants her to boost her spending to match that of our other account with them… As my 3 yr old would say in a sing-songy voice “Ooohhh, Discover….”
So, Hooray Us! for getting an offer to get cash back above and beyond their typical rewards, but it strikes me as devious or scheming in how it was presented.
Although, thinking about it now, I guess it’s just plain business. They see someone not spending much on their card each month, so why not try and lure that person to spend 3-4 times the amount they normally spend. Especially with the holidays, if you give a consumer a target of say ~$2k to hit and get “rewarded” with a free $300 to spend at Amazon among other places, well, it would seem that it should be a no brainer to spend that amount and get your “free money”. Then maybe they are over their usual budget and can’t pay it all off at once and then interest accrues. Who wins there? Discover.
But think about this in the case of most consumers.
Hell, let’s use me as an example of said consumer, from just a mere 7 years ago. I carried revolving debt and was constantly paying towards it, because my spend was way over my pay-down each month. Yes, yes, I know, Bad Mr. SSC, and you can read about that more here. But I would’ve been delighted at that offer. Spend $2000/month and get $300? Hell yeah, free money! But is it really? Let’s say I had just 16% interest (I paid late occasionally, so it was probably closer to 18% – cringe!!) over the course of one month, that interest would be $320. Someone check my math, I could be way off…. They’ve already gotten their “free money” back plus $20 if I don’t pay it down for just 1 month. 1 month! That’s it.
So for all those analysts sitting inside the machine that is called Discover, they’ve just earned their bonuses. Think about it. If they get just 10,000 people to accept this offer and not pay their additional $2k spend down for just one month, they made Discover an extra $200,000!! That’s just from the $20 extra per person that doesn’t pay it all down. And that’s not compounding that with the fact it will probably take more than 1 month to pay it down, so just by this one little offer, they will most likely make more than they put out there to give away as free money. Genius Discover, pure genius!
For those not in a situation to pay that balance off, it’s lose, lose. But I wouldn’t have known that or thought about it back in the day, and they would’ve made way more than the $300 they “gave” me. I would have never realized I just stole from myself because it was worded as spend blah amount and get Blah amount FREE!
Have you ever gotten taken by something that seemed great but you realized later, “This free money cost me SO much more than it was worth?”
I’d love to hear that younger Mr. SSC wasn’t the only one that wouldn’t see past that “free offer” and get taken for much, much, more.
